One fact I have found out over the years..... Put a number on a vehicle and it's reliability declines 50%. It doesn't make any difference if the vehicle is and F500, F Mod, Showroom Stock, race or autocross or anything else. Any car that is used in competition at some point in the competition gets stressed to its maximum extent. Stress anything to the max and over a period of time it will eventually fail, generally when you can least afford for it to fail. I have crewed for a National Showroom Stock competitor and they have their failures, all competition cars will fail.....at some point in time.
In my years with this class (now 19), which has included all the engines except the 493, the thing that has failed the most is the ignition system....I have had to replace some ignition piece, be it coil, CDI, Stator or trigger at some point in time on every engine I have ever run. Chaparral, Kawasaki, AMW or Rotax 494. For my money the electrics of the engines are their weakest point. The maddening feature of ignition failure is that one second it is working and the next second it isn't. Mechanically, with the exception of the AMW, I have found all the engines to be reasonably reliable. My 494 was the 1st to compete in National competition at Sebring in 1997 and it lasted until the 2006 Runoff's when a failed water pump seal and resulting corrosion caused a catastrophic rotary valve failure and the demise of the engine. Prior to that time it had top end rebuilds in 2000 and 2003 Chuck McAbee SEDIV #16 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Vriesinga Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 5:30 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [SPAM] Re: [F500] Official 2007 participation data >I actually would have to agree with Chris here, i got out of f500 >simply because i hated getting to a race and flipping a coin weather >or not the motor would fire. My experience first year: For every minute the car actually ran I spent roughly ten hours diagnosing/fixing. I spent literally hundreds of hours wrenching on the car. I personally did not accumulate one full hour total seat time throughout the year.Granted, most of this crap had to do with my complete ignorance regarding 2 cycles. Fortunately, I didn't have much else to do, but I can easily where someone would take a grenade, blow the car to hell, and give up on racing all together. Lord knows I was tempted. On more than one occasion I was left standing at an event seething with rage over yet another botched effort. In any event, if the POS doesn't work this year, there will be a 600cc bike engine in it before the season is finished. Count on it. JV ________________________________ FormulaCar Magazine - A Proud Supporter of Formula 500 The Official Publication of Junior Formula Car Racing Subscribe Today! www.formulacarmag.com or 519-624-2003 _________________________________ _______________________________________________ F500 mailing list - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change options please visit: http://f500.org/mailman/listinfo/f500 *** Please, DO NOT send unsubscribe requests to the mailing list! ***
